Geza de Takats, 1892–1985

Abstract

For more than 60 years, Geza de Takats exerted a profound influence on general surgery while the subspecialty of vascular surgery was born. He led investigations that changed therapy; he stimulated others to think. As Andrew Dale summarized at a dinner honoring Geza: “In an era when rush and bustle were the order of the day, he invariably exhibited charm, thoughtfulness, and friendship for his colleagues.” The oldest surviving member of the founding group of the Society for Vascular Surgery, he died on Oct. 4, 1985 after a brief illness. His keen mind was active, his humor was intact, and his eye twinkled while he recited the inevitable limerick even in the last week of his life. Geza de Takats was born in Budapest, Hungary on Dec. 9, 1892. He entered the Medical School of the University of Budapest in 1910, and during his third year he studied in Freiburg where Aschoff, the great pathologist, was teaching. While he was serving compulsory military service in the Tirol, World War I broke out and he was shipped to the Italian front in the Dolomites. As typhus fever destroyed much of the medical manpower of the Austro-Hungarian Army, he was recalled to complete medical studies in 1915. After this, he was assigned to a mobile surgical group on the Russian front and then transferred to Belgrade to the headquarters of the Balkan operations of the Austro-Hungarian forces. He was stimulated to become a surgeon when he was exposed to massive war casualties. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been ophthalmologists; the latter established the free Eye Hospital in one of the provincial towns in Hungary. After demobilization in 1918, he studied surgery at the First Surgical Clinic of the University of Budapest and then studied for a year at the University of Copenhagen under Professor Rovsing. At the urging of his father, the Dean of the Medical School, he applied for and received the Traveling Fellowship of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1923. He visited the surgical departments of Harvey Cushing, Allen O. Whipple, and Charles Frazier and spent time at the Mayo Clinic, where he worked in the experimental laboratory with Frank C. Mann. There he met Carol Beeler, who became his wife of almost 60 years. Geza said of her that she was “...so different from any girl I had ever met, serious, sedate, well-read, good skier and golfer, much better than I in both sports.” They were engaged for three weeks and were married in six. They returned to Hungary to a “strange country with a strange people in a turbulent state.” After a year in Hungary, Carol and Geza returned to Chicago and, for Geza, to a fellowship in surgery at Northwestern University Medical School under Allen B. Kanavel. There he founded a Vascular Clinic in 1928. He transferred his activities in 1935 to the University of Illinois and became Clinical Professor of Surgery there in 1952 and Emeritus Professor in 1960. During his work as attending surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital and Chief of the Surgical Staff there, he became Chairman of the Cardiovascular Laboratory and eventually became Professor of Surgery Emeritus at Rush College Medical School on the reactivation of its charter in the fall of 1971. His presidency in various organizations included the Chicago Heart Association in 1962, Society for Vascular Surgery in 1953, North American Chapter of the International Cardiovascular Society from 1952 to 1954, Chicago Surgical Society in 1954, International Cardiovascular Society from 1965 to 1967, and, in a unique position emblematic of his breath of knowledge, President of the Chicago Literary Club in 1971. He was the author of the books, Local Anesthesia (1928), Thromboembolic Disease (1955), and Vascular Surgery (1959). In the preface to this last volume, he said, “It is in the very areas where technical advances are the most frequent that there is greatest need for a statement of fundamental principles.” A recitation of the memberships held and offices served does not do justice to the personality of Geza de Takats. He was a close friend of architects, executives, poets, and philosophers in Chicago and many surgeons throughout the world. Harris Shumacker characterized him in his history of the Society for Vascular Surgery as the “philosopher of vascular surgery” and Geza in the foreword to that volume paid tribute to his many friends in vascular surgery saying, “...those who envisioned, supported, and expanded a specialty which was once ignored, neglected, and even discounted in certain medical centers.” Those of us who work in vascular surgery today owe much to Geza de Takats. His memory is cherished.